Andrew Pisker has a solid reputation in the international bond markets. While at Lehman Brothers (1982-96) he became the bank’s youngest managing director, was instrumental – in conjunction with the Asian Development Bank – in the establishment of the dragon bond market and accumulated numerous industry awards. There was plenty of speculation in the market as to where he might go next.
The answer came at the beginning of May. Pisker’s new employer was to be Dresdner Kleinwort Benson. The German bank needed a big-name appointment to stabilize its debt division, following the departure of former head TJ Lim and a host of senior bankers. Sadly for Dresdner, no sooner had TJ Lim’s team hit its stride than the aborted merger laid waste to it. Predictably Pisker says this is a “great opportunity”, but his expectations are not entirely rose-tinted. “No-one has suggested that it’s going to be easy because clearly there has been the small subject of the Deutsche Dresdner merger which didn’t happen,” he says. “But I have been given the chance to build a business along a unitary debt platform. The firm has a fully-functioning working equity division, a fully-functioning working corporate finance division and a markets division. And of the European investment banks there are only two or three who could claim that.”
Says one banker at a rival firm and a frequent counterparty: “He’s impressive, smart, bright, quick. He’s also very amusing and fun to work with and do deals with.” Such qualities will be important as Pisker sets about building his team. “The priorities will be to stabilize those areas that have seen some departures,” he says, “to reinvigorate the division and hopefully to attract some good new people.” He cites his time at Paribas as good training in this respect. Contractually prevented from taking any people from Lehman Brothers, he was forced to recruit and work with people who were entirely new to him.
Andrew Pisker was born in London in 1960, the son of an industrialist. At St Paul’s School he was a member of the tennis team who were public school champions three years in a row and national champions for a year. After London University, where he read economics and politics, he spent eight months playing in satellite tournaments around the world and the qualifying rounds for Wimbledon. He once had a world ranking of 732. “If you described me as a failed tennis player,” he says, “that would be just about accurate.”
Having got tennis out of his system, Pisker joined Lehman Brothers Kuhn Loeb in 1982 as the bank’s first graduate trainee in London: previously they’d only taken on MBAs. “They wanted to recruit some local people and it just happened to coincide with the time I came back from playing tennis. American firms tend to like sports people. They probably thought: ‘we have a competitive one here’.”
After three months in sales he became the junior trader on the FRN desk. Eighteen months later, when his boss left, he was given the job of running the FRN trading desk for Europe. Over the next three years he helped put in place a team of traders spanning London, Tokyo and New York. It became Lehman’s most profitable trading business in Europe while producing such innovations as the capped FRN.
In 1987, Pisker was promoted to run European syndicate. In 1991, his responsibilities were widened to include European debt capital markets. In 1992, Pisker became, at 32, Lehman’s youngest managing director and the following year he was also put in charge of the credit trading businesses. In 1995, he was oVered the job of global head of syndicate based in New York, but couldn’t go because of his wife’s work (she was a fashion model). It didn’t matter too much. The next year Lehman made him global head of syndicate in London. Pisker left Lehman in 1996 and had plans to set up a credit hedge fund, but was persuaded to join Paribas. His job was to co-head the bank’s global bond business with Cyrus Ardalan. Within six months he was running the bond business alone, and by the beginning of 1999 he was helping to run the entire fixed-income business as deputy to Michel Pertier. He does not take up his new post until August, so has a couple of months free in which to polish his collection of classic cars and maybe take in Wimbledon.
